The unicist functional marketing strategies are focused on the generation of added value to customers establishing a complementary relationship with them. This requires using marketing strategies to influence each specific buying process. The structure of functional strategies applies both to B2C and B2B markets. These strategies define the structural marketing strategies that are needed based on the characteristics of the segments of buyers and the products or services proposed.
The Unicist Functional Marketing Strategies
The discovery of the functionality of human intelligence, made at The Unicist Research Institute, enabled the discovery and management of the root causes of buying processes. The management of the root causes allowed for defining the methods to develop segmented marketing objects and catalysts that significantly accelerate selling processes.
The discovery that human actions are driven by the concepts people have and that buying decisions are triggered by the conceptual short-term memory (CSTM) opened new possibilities in the understanding of human behavior.
Conceptual marketing is based on managing the root causes of buying processes and using catalysts and marketing objects to influence and accelerate buying decisions.
The Functionalist Approach to Marketing
The functionalist approach to marketing deals with the nature of mental processes. As it is known, marketing can be defined as the process in which a space is opened in the market where a product or service can be positioned as a first-choice alternative. This positioning is measured in terms of perceptions while its consequences are measured quantitatively.
Functionalist marketing is an adaptive process that positions the products and services based on two different approaches:
- A differentiation-driven approach
- A cost-value-driven approach
The differentiation-based approach is driven by the value-adding utopias in a market and is based on the existing growth myths. The marketing models that correspond to the differentiation-driven segment are dysfunctional in the cost-value-driven segment.
The cost-value-based approach is driven by the value-earning utopias of a market that are based on the existent survival myths. The marketing model that corresponds to the cost-value-driven segment is dysfunctional in the differentiation-driven segment.
The universal marketing strategies apply to all types of marketing although their application varies according to the products, the businesses, and the markets. Marketing is an adaptive environment with open boundaries, where providers and customers participate and depend on each other. Univocal cause-effect relationships only exist in systemic environments, not in adaptive environments.
In adaptive environments with open boundaries, there are only bi-univocal cause-effect relationships, so unidirectional actions unavoidably generate dysfunctional reactions. Therefore, marketing works as a complex environment that requires the use of binary actions when there is a need to influence potential buyers.
These actions need to fit into the concept of the potential customers by introducing synchronized maximal and minimum strategy actions. For this reason, the knowledge of conceptual segmentation is basic to any marketing process in adaptive environments.
Synopsis of the Functional Marketing Strategies
Eight different strategies can be defined based on the universal ontological structure of marketing considered a complex system. In the field of marketing, there are two different strategic approaches, differentiation-driven marketing and cost-value-driven marketing. These approaches are managed at an operational level in the market.
The unicist functionalist approach is based on the basic research, which drove to the development of the unicist logic and the unicist ontology that defines “things” based on their functionality. The applied research drove to the development of functionalist marketing.
Functionalist marketing is based on the discovery of the roots of human intelligence, its application to influence people and the discovery of the conceptual structure of the natural marketing models that allow influencing the different segments of the market.
This applies to all types of businesses being they non-profit activities, B2C businesses or B2B businesses. These eight models are:
Differentiation-Driven Marketing Strategies
- First Choice Driven Marketing
- Sponsor Driven Marketing
- Innovation Marketing
- Passive Influence Driven Marketing
Price-Driven Marketing Strategies
- Brand Driven Marketing
- Referrals Driven Marketing
- Demonstration Driven Marketing
- Relationship Driven Marketing
Generation of Expectations: the Catalyst
Marketing catalysts are external elements that open new spaces and accelerate a marketing process. The value promises that generate expectations and are based on latent needs are the catalysts of a market.
They generate new market possibilities and accelerate buying decisions. Marketing catalysts fulfill three roles to sustain the expansion of markets:
- The catalysts open a space: Their value promise must be shared with the potential clients.
- The catalysts accelerate buying processes.
- The catalysts introduce a superior level of efficiency in marketing processes.
Functionalist Marketing in Action
Functionalist marketing is based on establishing the natural steps of the buying process of a product or service. Each segment is considered an autonomous but interdependent universe. According to the required steps, it might become necessary to either use a specific marketing approach for each step or use a unique marketing approach for the buying process.
The marketing process includes the design of the necessary binary actions to access the concepts people have in mind by developing a maximal strategy to grow together with a synchronized minimum strategy to ensure results. The design of the marketing process is based on the development of segmented pilot tests until the functionality has been confirmed.
When it is confirmed, there is a need to develop destructive tests to measure the scope of application of the process that allows expanding to other segments and developing commercial synergy with other value propositions.
Competitive Strategy Building
In adaptive environments, competition is a basic condition for growth. The competition enables earning additional space in the environment based on the additional value that is provided. Competitive strategies are based on the development of confrontation strategies that need to be functional to the competition, to the competitors, and to the strategist.
The Nature of Market Confrontation
Marketing is a permanent confrontation with competitors. A confrontation may be active or passive, but it is always present. If the parties understand that confrontation is a permanent condition, they will be conscious of each one’s possibilities and the objectives that can be achieved in the market.
A confrontation is the result of a conflict. In expansive cultures, a confrontation is considered an unwanted extreme situation, on the one hand, but a natural condition, on the other. That is the reason why developed and developing countries have such different conceptions of marketing.
In the conquest of markets, clients acquire either one product or another, so that, one competitor wins and the other one loses in each purchase. This is a natural situation in every developed culture, but, on the other extreme, underdeveloped countries have a different conception of confrontation.
Underdeveloped cultures are characterized by their identification with the victim, while they seek to obtain benefits from the victimizer. That is why it is difficult for them to participate in confrontations to achieve a competitive advantage in relation to a competitor.
Independently of each person’s individual attitude, companies need to be in a condition to start a confrontation against their competitors.
Competing for Growth
Competition is the catalyst of growth. This applies to any kind of activity. It is also a rule that applies to nature. Conflicts are the consequence of this need to grow, which applies to personal, institutional, or social conflicts.
Negotiation is the diplomatic way to solve conflicts while confrontation is the disruptive way to solve them. The problem of diplomacy is that it requires that all the parties involved in a conflict need to accept negotiation as the pathway. Confrontations begin when diplomacy fails.
There are aspects of life where confrontation is natural, such as sports, art, love, work, business, etc. When confrontation is unavoidable, one’s strategic intelligence provides the solution.
Assuming a leading role and competing for such a role in the environment is the gravitational force that sustains competition. People who do not need to lead cannot compete, because they just need to survive. When this commitment to a leading role is given, expanding boundaries based on the use of this leadership becomes possible.
The purpose of competitive processes is to win and thus earn value. Such competitive processes drive naturally towards individual transcendence, if it is an individual who is competing, and institutional transcendence if an institution is competing.
Competing requires having a dualistic approach towards the competitor, which implies competing in an environment where the individual has the necessary skills to supersede the skills of the competitor.
The research on structural competitive strategies was developed to be able to define which strategy is functional in which type of confrontation.
The four types of strategic styles tend towards the following confrontations:
Idealists will naturally tend to develop Ethical Niche Confrontations to expand, and Influence Building Confrontations to defend. They need to build a superior functionality for their value-adding actions.
Flank Defendants will naturally tend to develop Ideological Niche Confrontations to expand and Survival Confrontations to defend. They need to build their competitive advantage to develop their strategy.
Frontals will naturally tend to develop Dominance Confrontations to expand and Annulment Confrontations to defend. They need to build superior solutions to confirm their added value.
Empty Space Occupiers will naturally tend to develop Conquest Confrontations to expand and Obstructing-Confrontations to defend. They need to confirm their capacity to expand the boundaries of their activities.
The natural type of confrontation that individuals use depends on their strategic style. But when their strategic intelligence is complemented, they might integrate these natural confrontation types with the types of confrontations that are functional considering the environment and the counterpart.
The apparent paradox is that to negotiate it is necessary to be able to confront because this capacity provides the necessary dissuasion power in the negotiation process.
Market Confrontation Strategies
Marketing implies positioning products as “the first choice” for the client. Everybody has to “want them”.
That is the reason why there is a confrontation. Confrontations have winners and losers. There are always winners and losers, even when it is about a stable, non-competitive, technological, or commercial oligopolistic market.
There are no confrontations under monopoly conditions. All the competitors prefer their suppliers’ markets to be competitive, but their own market to be a monopoly.
Few people realize that in monopolistic markets, there are either succedanea that balance monopoly, or a third party (usually the State) that interferes. In this case, a conflict with the State begins that may or may not end as a confrontation.
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